We’ve all felt the sting of losing a beloved brand when a company goes out of business, stops making your favorite candy or gets sold off bit by bit to the highest bidder. But what if you could resurrect those treasured relics of days gone by and bring them back anew? And how would it even be possible?

Here’s where Ellia Kassoff comes in. Inspired simply by childhood memories of his favorite candies, Kassoff found himself wondering why he couldn’t just raise those beloved brands from the dead. Though to be fair, Kassoff’s childhood memories of candy and treats were a bit different than your average kid growing up in the 1970s because his uncle Ed Leaf’s uncles and father happened to be the founders of Leaf Brands, the company behind candies like Jolly Ranchers, PayDay, Whoppers and Heath, among others.

By the time Kassoff was an adult working in the world of executive recruiting, Leaf had been sold off Huhtamaki Oy, a Finnish company, which in turn sold off some of the more famous brands to Hershey in 1996.

And that brings us to the present, or at least the very recent present. Consumerist heard Kassoff had resurrected Leaf and happened upon the announcement that Kassoff was bringing back Hydrox, Tart n Tinys and other beloved but, until recently, dead (or were they just mostly dead?) products.

Combined these resurrected treats with a list of 21 regional department stores Kassoff lists as falling under the ownership of his company, Strategic Marks LLC, we were intrigued. Would things taste the same? Look the same? How could he possibly be able to launch a new Marshall Fields, a new Joseph Magnin, or heck, a new May Company?

“It’s very selfish,” Kassoff tells Consumerist of his reasons for bringing these bands back from the grave. “A lot of these brands are just the brands that I remember. I’m 46 years old, and so I grew up with a lot of these brands… I love that time of my life and the memories that were so important during that period. My dad used to go to the store; we were a kosher family, and all we bought was Hydrox. So ultimately, it was stuff that I wanted to bring back myself.”

Deserving a Second Look?

Here are some once-famous brands that may be ripe for resurrection:
PanAm: Pan American World Airways, international airline (1927-1991)
DeLorean: Motor vehicle of the future! Or at least, Back to the Future (1975- 1982)
Beatrice Food: Maker of Butterball, Peter Pan, Tropicana (1894- 1990)
Pullman Company: Railroad car manufacturer, split up, then original company dissolved (1862- 1969)
Eastern Airlines: Mail carrier turned domestic travel giant (1926-1991)
Compaq: One of the largest sellers of PCs in the world at one time (1982-2012)
Burger Chef: At one time the #2 fast-food burger chain in the U.S. (1954-1996)
TWA: Airline that peaked in the early 1980s (1930-2001)
Montgomery Ward: Company known for its catalog sales (1872-2001)
American Motors Corp. (AMC): Challenger to Big Three automakers (1954-1988)
F.W. Woolworth Company: Five-and-dime chain famous throughout U.S. (1870-1997, changed name of company to Foot Locker in 2001)
Chipwich: Chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream (1981-2007)
Oldsmobile: Car brand that sold 35 million units (1897-2004)

Kassoff had particularly fond memories of the Astro Pop, the conical, tricolor lollipop from the early days of the space race, when children everywhere dreamed of rocketing off to the moon. After around 50 years, production of the retro treat ceased in 2004.

“I couldn’t believe it!” says Kassoff about the first time he realized he could no longer buy Astro Pops. “I’m like, ‘This is a part of Americana! What do you mean they don’t make it anymore?’”

While you and I might just throw up our hands and gripe about the death of another beloved brand, Kassoff called Spangler Candy, which had been acquired the Astro Pops brand in 1987, and spoke to the company’s president, who explained that the product just didn’t fit into the Spangler plan anymore. On a whim, Kassoff offered to buy the brand.

“It just popped out of my mouth,” he admits. “I never thought of it, but I couldn’t let it die. I figured somebody’s got to take the torch.”

After a couple of years of back-and-forth talks, that rocket-shaped lollipop was Kassoff’s to do with as he pleased. And the first thing he did was bring back it’s original shape.

At some point in the Astro’s recent history, Spangler had reversed the position of the lollipop’s stick so that the pointy end of the pop was now at the bottom.

“They were worried that for safety reasons people might poke themselves or whatever with it,” says Kassoff. “The pop had been around since 1962, 1963, and there were no real problems with it. There was an occasional idiot riding a skateboard and he was sucking on it and he claimed to have fallen on the pop when he fell off of the skateboard.”

The rebirth of Leaf is a bit tangled. Back in the ’80s, the candy brand was split into Leaf U.S. and Leaf International, with Hershey getting the former and Finland’s Huhtamäki Oyj getting the latter. However, while Hershey purchased the U.S. rights to Leaf’s products, the actual Leaf Brands name went to Leaf International.

“I started doing research and found out that I didn’t see any Leaf products in the U.S., and if you don’t have Leaf products in the U.S., you can’t use the trademark,” explains Kassoff, who then filed what’s known as a forced-cancellation with the Trademark Office. His argument was simple: Huhtamäki Oyj was not using the name Leaf stateside, so it had ceded its right to the trademark.

To his surprise, the Finns didn’t put up a fight over the Leaf name in the U.S., setting Kassoff on his path toward breathing life into other dormant brands.

Contrary to popular belief, Hydrox cookies — which Kellogg quietly killed off about a decade ago — were not Oreo knock-offs. Sunshine introduced Hydrox in 1908, four years before Nabisco introduced the Oreo.

And yet, possibly because people weren’t tantalized by Hydrox’s chemical-sounding name (which Kellogg changed, in a last-gasp attempt to save the product, to Droxies), Oreo would go on to dominate the market while Hydrox developed a devoted fan base, including Kassoff, who is now planning to bring the sandwich cookies back to supermarkets this fall.

Much like with the Leaf trademark, Kassoff had to demonstrate that Kellogg had not used the Hydrox trademark in years before he could launch a resurrected version of the cookie.

“You’d be surprised how many companies are hoarding trademarks,” he tell Consumerist. “In other words, to be blunt, they lie to the Trademark Office.”

The big question is whether he’s just bringing back the Hydrox name and hoping to cash in on nostalgia, or if he’s also bringing back the Hydrox recipe so that the cookie’s fan base won’t riot.

“We actually have the exact recipe, and that’s all I can tell you,” says Kassoff coyly. “All I can tell you is that we have people that know how to make a Hydrox, that they might have made it in the past, maybe.”

While Leaf’s Facebook page for Hydrox shows a photo of a plant where the cookies will be made, Kassoff says it’s not like he’s going out and building a factory just to put out one cookie. Instead, just like electronics manufacturers who hand off most of their assembly to third party companies, Leaf depends on contracted companies to do its production.

“We outsource everything,” he explains. “The efficiencies have changed where you’ve got large companies that make specific types of product. I don’t want to be in the capital business. I don’t want to have a bunch of machinery and equipment when there are plenty of companies that can make it for you. You would be surprised by how many products out there are made by other candy companies or other manufactures. I mean, that’s just the way the business is.”

Retail Resurrection

Kassoff says he is attempting to bring back these stores back from the grave:
Joseph Magnin: San Francisco
Bullock’s: Southern California
May Company: St. Louis
Robinson’s: Southern California, Arizona
Jordan Marsh: Boston
Filene’s: New England
The Broadway: Southwest
The Bon Marche: Seattle, Northwest
Abraham and Straus: New York City
Burdines: Florida
Rich’s: Atlanta/Southern U.S.
Foley’s: Texas
Marshall Field’s: Chicago
Goldsmith’s: Memphis
Hecht’s: Mid-Atlantic
I. Magnin & Company: West Coast, Arizona
Kaufmann’s: East Coast
Lazarus: Midwest
Meier & Frank: Portland, Ore.
Stern’s: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey
Strawbridge’s: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware

Stepping way from Kassoff’s candy-and-cookie quest, there’s an interesting list on his LinkedIn profile of 21 regional department stores, including some very well-known ones, that no longer exist under their original names.

He wants to bring these back as online stores and to test them out as pop-up stores in the regions where they were once dominant retailers.

“I want to bring back the regional flavor, the regional buyers, the regional feel of these communities,” says Kassoff, “because what they did, is they ripped out the heart of each one of these communities. They lost a lot of money — if you add up the sales, they lost a lot of sales when they went to Macy’s because now Macy’s is just some big ass brand from New York.”

Just like his candy ventures, his retail brand adventure began with research into once-popular trademarks that have not been used by the companies that claim to hold those marks. Every ten years, the companies affirm to the Trademark folks that they are indeed using those marks, but if you can prove that it’s years since the mark was actually used in commerce, it could be up for grabs.

That’s how, Kassoff claims, he got the trademark to Marshall Field’s, the once-beloved Chicago-based department store chain that Macy’s parent company purchased in 2005 and subsequently converted to Macy’s stores.

According to Kassoff, Macy’s Inc. (formerly Federated Department Stores) hasn’t been on the up-and-up with its trademark filings.

“They weren’t using these trademarks,” he claims. “We have proof they weren’t using these trademarks… Macy’s went to the Trademark Office and said, ‘No, no! These are ours! These are ours! We started it! This has our heritage! It’s our heritage!’ And the Trademark Office said, ‘Sorry, but you’re not using it. You haven’t used it in years.’”

Kassoff now lists Marshall Field’s, along with dozens of others, in the portfolio for his business called Strategic Marks.

But Macy’s isn’t letting go that easily; it’s filed a federal lawsuit to keep him from using the trademarks.

He also says that, in the wake of his trademark claims, Macy’s began selling items branded with the logos of Marshall Field’s and other long-dead department stores that the company had acquired over the years.

Consumerist reached out to Macy’s for a chance to comment on claims made by Kassoff during this interview; as of the publishing of this story, we have not heard back.

Plans for these stores to re-enter the consumer world are on hold while the two parties fight over the trademark in court.

“I’m not the first one to do this,” admits Kassoff. “There’s about three to four of us that I know who are doing it. I, for one, think that there’s a real viable business in it because I am coming from a branding and marketing perspective… that’s what I really enjoy.”

But while there might be any number of dormant brands out there waiting to be claimed and brought back to the marketplace, he cautions that it still requires a lot of money to actually get resurrected products on store shelves.

Additionally, just because you apply for a trademark doesn’t mean you’ll get it.

“Anyone can apply for the trademark, but the cost can be very high if some company like Macy’s challenges you,” he explains. “As long as you have an attorney that partners with you, you could really have a nice little business — and the feeling you get of bringing back something that is not just for you, but for tons of other people is awesome.”

It can be incredibly painful to realize that you can barely remember what the voice of a dead loved one sounded like. However, we’re not sure that we accept the proposed solution of one T-Mobile customer service rep. Reader Robert says that he was asked whether he wants to keep his dead father’s line open so he can call up his voice mail periodically.

Fortunately, we’ve learned that this is not an approved retention tactic at T-Mobile, and the company made things up to Richard. However, we’re appalled that this happened in the first place, and bereaved family members should be aware that slimy sales reps might try this.

Keeping the line open isn’t necessarily a bad or distasteful thing to do. You could keep the phone around and charged so you can intercept your loved one’s calls and texts and tell them the bad news.

Robert had a line for his dad on his account, and called up T-Mobile to cancel. “The loyalty rep asked me if he had a voicemail set up,” Richard wrote to Consumerist. “I said yes. She then asked if I wouldn’t want to keep the extra line open so that I could call it and hear his voice whenever I want to. How low is that?”

Pretty low, but we’ve heard of similar tactics in the past. Fortunately, when we alerted T-Mobile to this incident, they found it upsetting too. Robert sent us an update shortly after Big Magenta contacted him. After we sent his letter to T-Mobile’s media relations team, someone from the office of the president called him. “She apologized for how their salesperson tried to keep my line open,” Robert told Consumerist. “She said that it’s not how they train their people, and the rep would be re-trained.”

As an apology, the company is waiving his entire bill for this month, a total of $147. Very classy, T-Mobile!

While bull penis, or pizzle, is often sold as something for dogs to gnaw on, and it can be — and sometimes is — eaten by humans, it’s not cool to take something out of a package that’s labeled as unfit for human consumption and then sell it to people.

But according to the Texas Attorney General’s office, that’s what one grocery store in Austin was caught doing.

The AG has filed a civil complaint against the store and some of its employees for allegedly selling “non-inspected, adulterated and misbranded beef pizzle as human food.”

KXAN-TV reports that employees are accused of unpacking the pizzle from packaging labeled “inedible” and “not intended for human use” then sold the penises with other products for humans to eat.

The deception alleged isn’t that the store was trying to pass off pizzle as a different type of meat. It’s that the store tried to trick shoppers into thinking that this was human-grade beef pizzle by repackaging the stuff with labels falsely indicating that the meat had been inspected and was from a registered source.

The store faces a fine of $5,000 for the pizzle hijinks.

[via NY Daily News]

I don’t want to say pigs can conceive and carry out plans, per se, but you’ve got to wonder how one pig in South America seemed to know it really didn’t want to be on a truck heading to the slaughterhouse. Perhaps one day he’ll be bacon, but it won’t be this day.

Babe made a break for it and was caught on video (via the Daily Mail) by someone in a vehicle behind the delivery truck filled with pigs.

He takes a peek to assess the situation, then wrests his body up high enough to stand on his doomed buddies’ backs, before launching himself out of the moving vehicle at high speed and tumble to the ground.

He (yes, I’ve decided he’s a he) reportedly fell more than 10 feet, which must feel like nothing to the hero of our story, who then totters off over a grassy knoll, ostensibly toward whichever farm of his youth he’s yearning to get back to.

Actually though, it’s unclear what happened to the little guy, but I’m hoping he went wee wee wee all the way home. He deserves it.

And how about the people taking the video? They sound remarkably calm, despite the inherent danger in a big pig hitting the roadway.

The very first thing most of us learned about driving a car? You don’t want to hit anything. That lesson played out in an unfortunate way for one Ohio teenager whose practice driving session wound up with her car going through the brick wall of a Popeyes Louisiana Restaurant drive-thru.

Police say the teen was with her mother when she lost control of the car and slammed into the restaurant, reports WLWT.com (warning: video autoplays).

“It looks like the whole right front tire is in my building,” the 911 caller said. “”It’s totally through the wall, that’s for sure.”

No Popeyes customers will suffer a minute without access to their food, however, as a building engineer said the restaurant is structurally safe.

As for the details surrounding the accident, police says she was driving without a license or even a learner’s permit, and reportedly was “stunned” when she saw another car and hit the gas.

Cops say it’s best to get some experience in before you just take a whirl at driving, especially in busy locations like this one.

“At the minimum, have them get a learner’s permit and get the basics, and I would not pick rush hour to teach someone to drive a vehicle that does not have any experience at all,” a police sergeant said.

No one was seriously injured, but a Popeyes employee was taken to the hospital for minor injuries and the teen’s mother suffered an ankle injury. She and her daughter are possibly facing charges connected with driving without a license.

Teen’s driving lesson ends with mother, daughter crashing into Popeyes [WLWT.com]

The race to launch a mid-calorie soda that appeals to a wide audience continues, as does the trend of giving these new drinks stupid, stupid names. Following in the footsteps of Pepsi Next and Dr. Pepper TEN, the Coke folks are reportedly bring Stevia-sweetened Coca-Cola Life stateside in the coming months.

Beverage Digest Tweeted about the news yesterday, saying that Coke would introduce the not-as-calorific drink in the U.S. after months of testing in Argentina.

AJC.com says the debut for Coca-Cola Life, which we presume won out against Coca-Cola Famine, Coca-Cola Herpes, Coca-Cola Turd, and Coca-Cola Dead Dog in a name-that-cola competition, will be in September or October. That’s about the same time as it’s set to hit stores in the UK, which apparently loves life as much as we do.

While the beverage companies have been trying to come up with no- and low-calorie options for soda fans who don’t like the saccharine “diet cola” taste, none have really made a huge impression on consumers, who are leaving for beverages that have fewer calories — like unsweetened tea and coffee, or that old classic, water.

Last year, the FDA gave the the okay for a Coca-Cola-backed sweetener with the tongue-friendly name of Rebaudioside M, or Reb M. Which supposedly improves upon previous stevia formulations by having a taste that is closer to table sugar.

And again, while on the topic of stevia, we can’t help but share this spoiler-heavy clip from Breaking Bad:

Today, there was a festive groundbreaking ceremony at the Latham Circle Mall near Albany, NY. A dead enclosed mall was demolished and will be replaced with a strip center of big-box stores in Nowheresville, USA: why is that interesting? It gives us an excuse to highlight the mall’s very unofficial Facebook account, a funny local prank that transcends its region.

After all, every region has that one mall that is dead or on life support. Even if you’ve never visited the Latham Circle Mall, you’ve been there before. Surely there’s a dead mall somewhere near you, where you can see the familiar storefronts of your childhood in ruin, with tarp-covered empty store spaces, broken floor tiles, and leaking roofs.

The fun began back in 2011, when the mall was already quite doomed. However, the page seemed…sincere. Nostalgic.

That didn’t last long.

Criticize the premise of the page if you want to, but at least it tried to drum up business for the mall.

The Knickerbocker News stopped printing in 1988, the mall’s heyday.

As 2013 began, demolition loomed.

LCM didn’t accept that reality.

No matter what the biased local media outlets said.

Even once demolition began.

It tried to find the bright side.

Even if there wasn’t always a bright side.

With no pesky customers, the fake mall even had some time to keep up with retail news. Such as events at other local malls…

The faux mall reacted to the news that some malls and retailers were opening early on Thanksgiving in 2013, assuring customers that Latham Circle Mall would do no such thing, what with being a pile of rubble and all.

The mall had a firm anti-Christmas Creep stance.

Finally, a nonexistent mall doesn’t have to worry about credit card breaches like the one at Target during the holiday season, does it?

The page lives on and its owner has posted as recently as April. Meanwhile, the original mall has shut down and been demolished except for a standalone Lowe’s store. Yesterday, the mall’s real owners held a groundbreaking ceremony and announced that Walmart will be the first tenant in the new strip center.

Maybe the new mall, the ridiculously named “Shoppes at Latham Circle,” will have its own Facebook page, but it won’t be anywhere near as interesting as the self-aware dead mall in denial.

Latham Circle Mall [Facebook]

Hershey’s was not pleased when the candy giant learned that a Colorado manufacturer of edible marijuana products was selling items modeled after its own candies, including “Hashees” and “Ganja Joy.” Because they have, you know, reefer in them, as the kids probably don’t call it these days. But the company behind those treats says the lawsuit against it is a “big surprise.”

Maybe Hershey is just jealous over its own problems with marketing fortified chocolate products, but in any case, it’s displeased over the marijuana offerings.

The Colorado company behind the punny products seems totally flabbergasted that anyone would bother to sue over such items, especially because it changed the packaging on those items six months ago.

“We changed our entire label line approximately six months ago, long before these allegations surfaced,” the company’s owner said in a statement, via Reuters, calling the lawsuit a “huge” surprise. “Our new packaging looks nothing like Hershey’s or anyone else’s.”

And as for claims that its products would be tempting to kids, it adds that the treats are sold in childproof packaging, and are only available to customers with a doctor-prescribed “Red Card” at licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.

The company noted that it hasn’t yet been served with the lawsuit, but hopes that everything will be cleared up quickly.

A Hershey spokesman called the issue a “clear case” of trademark infringement and dilution, in response to the statement today.

“The court will decide if they have infringed on our valuable trademarks,” the spokesman said.

Among the steps taken was the creation of a task force to design packaging for marijuana edibles such as cookies and candy that makes them easily distinguishable from regular foods.

Colorado pot edibles maker says Hershey lawsuit a big surprise [Reuters]

Sometimes you won’t even know that you need to see an adorable baby mouse chilling in a hotel lobby, and then you see one and it’s just such an adorable relief. Don’t know what I mean? You are clearly in need of a baby moose.

A Vail, CO hotel had a special visitor yesterday, when a moose calf wandered into its lobby and didn’t know how to get back out again, reports 9News.com.

Aptly enough, the hotel has the word “Antlers” right in its name, which perhaps is some kind of siren song for any antlered animals.

Wildlife officials were able to catch up with the little guy as he pranced around the hotel and tranquilized it. He’s now heading for Fort Collins for care at a facility there.

Here’s the link to one witness’ cellphone footage of our little buddy scampering and frisking around and proclaiming his/her candidacy for representation in the Annals Of Supreme Cuteness. I’d embed it but it autoplays, and we’ve abolished autoplay in these parts.

WATCH: Baby moose visits Vail hotel [9NewNow.com]

If I were a betting gal, I’d say our fine, upstanding former presidents were big fans of meat jerky. It travels well in times of war or peace and can stand the test of time. So Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are probably totally cool with their likenesses recreated in meat in honor of National Jerky Day.

Everyone, Meat Rushmore. Meat Rushmore, Everyone.

This feat of meat was built by more than 20 staffers with Wisconsin company Jack Link’s, a purveyor of — what else? — jerky. It’s resting in New York City’s Columbus Circle, standing at a finished height of 13 feet and width of 17 feet, reports the Huffington Post, after 20 staffers put in 1,400 hours building it, lovingly sculpting those meaty noses and prominent meaty brows.

That’s about 1,600 pounds of beef, pork and turkey jerky in the base, or around five miles of meaty road if each meat stick were to be laid out end to end.

It’s only there until 6 p.m. today, after which time it’ll be sent back to a new home at the company headquarters in Minong, WI.

This promo video goes behind the meatapalooza:

‘Meat Rushmore’ Sculpture Shows Presidents Covered In Jerky [Huffington Post]

WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) and SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) are both federally-funded, state-administered programs with the simple goal of preventing Americans from going hungry. In Georgia, 54 people have been indicted for setting up pretend grocery stores that defrauded the programs of millions of dollars.

While this particular fraud scheme only came to light when the federal indictment was unsealed yesterday, taxpayers learned about problems with WIC administration in Georgia last year. The massive fraud and imaginary store scheme wouldn’t have been possible without serious problems in the state’s administration of nutrition programs. For example,

WIC is a stricter program than food stamps; it’s intended for families with small children and pregnant or lactating women. Recipients receive paper vouchers that they exchange for a very specific selection of groceries: think staple foods like fresh fruit, peanut butter, beans, canned fish, milk, and of course infant formula. It’s more challenging to defraud WIC, but this evidently doesn’t stop some people.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that the people indicted in this scheme allegedly set up imaginary grocery stores, then handed out cash in exchange for WIC recipients’ vouchers and SNAP (food stamps) recipients’ account balances. Participants in the fake store scheme have been charged with one count each of mail and wire fraud conspiracy, which carries a prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to $250,000, and one count of money laundering conspiracy, which carries the same prison term and a fine of up to $500,000.

People who exchanged more than $1,000 of their benefits for cash were also indicted: they face fines of $250,000 and up to five years in prison.

In Georgia, epic dysfunction in administration of the WIC program meant that millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted. Somehow, the program was paying up to $7 per gallon of milk. That would be about right for a gallon of organic milk at Whole Foods, but WIC vouchers don’t cover organic dairy products. The program’s computers were so outdated and useless that the program couldn’t even keep track of whether storekeepers previously banned from the program for fraud had opened new stores.

There isn’t really a happy ending here: maybe the upshot is that the state will be more vigilant in looking out for fraud and imaginary stores pretending to sell staple foods to families.

Fifty-Four Defendants Charged in $18 Million WIC and Food Stamp Fraud Conspiracy [FBI]
Atlantans charged in ‘massive’ food stamp fraud [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
“Huge problems” plague Georgia WIC program, cost taxpayers millions [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

The concept of a portable air conditioner implies that the device is portable, and that you can cool a room with it. They would be a wonderful tool if this were were true, but tests by our breezy and cool colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports show that they compare unfavorably to window-mounted air conditioners in pretty much every way, and you might be better off with no air conditioner at all.

Usually people don’t go out and choose one of these units when they could have a window air conditioner instead. It’s only when building regulations or practical concerns mean that they can’t install a window unit that people get these. (Or maybe they just don’t know better.)

The reason why they provide such crappy cooling is just physics. A portable air conditioner uses a hose to vent exhaust out a nearby window, which creates a few problems: for starters, negative air pressure that pulls warm air in from other rooms as the conditioned air gets pulled in to cool the condenser, then vented out the window. With the entire motor inside the room with you, the appliance makes more noise than a window air conditioner. They’re also very heavy, weighing 80-100 pounds, and not all that portable once you set up the window venting mechanism.

Consumer Reports says that if you have no other choice, get the Honeywell MN10CES[WW], which wasn’t a terrible performer, and only costs $400. If you have any choice at all, though, go with a window unit: you’ll get superior cooling for less money.

Are portable air conditioner claims a lot of hot air? [Consumer Reports]

Just a day after Toyota re-issued a 2013 recall because shrapnel could fly toward passengers when the airbag deploys, federal regulators opened an investigation into whether the airbags used by five automakers could hurt people in the event of a crash.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened the probe after receiving six reports of airbags rupturing in Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda and Chrysler vehicles, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Since August 2013, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigations received three complaints concerning airbag ruptures in a 2005 Honda Civic, a 2003 Toyota Corolla and a 2005 Mazda 6.

According to NHTSA documents [PDF], regulators then received two additional reports of ruptured airbags in a 2004 Nissan Sentra and a 2006 Dodge Charger from airbag supplier Takata. Additionally, Toyota reported another passenger airbag rupture in a 2002 Toyota Corolla. In all, three people reported being injured by the airbags or its parts.

Investigators say all of the incidents occurred in the high absolute humidity climate in Florida and Puerto Rico.

Officials with Takata, who supplied the airbags for the affected vehicles, tell the Chronicle the company is cooperating in the investigation.

Back in 2013, Toyota, Honda and Nissan recalled more than 3.4 million vehicles because of abnormally deploying airbags supplied by Takata.

The new NHTSA investigation seeks to collect information from Takata and the vehicle manufacturers to determine if other vehicles contain the defect.

Probe of air bags opened [The San Francisco Chronicle]

Fictional GE executive Jack Donaghy came up with the idea of transparent dishwasher doors, but it hasn’t yet become reality. This might be the next best thing, though. Last year, someone who owns a waterproof GoPro camera had a brilliant idea: devise a waterproof light source for inside the appliance, then film a wash cycle so we can all learn what is going on in there.

The answer is: um, some water spraying around and some dishes getting washed. The camera was affixed to the back right corner of the dishwasher, providing a nice view of the action. This is very interesting and all, but the action isn’t that exciting in the end. It’s probably more interesting to drive through a car wash, but watching the four-and-a-half-minute wash cycle feels like intruding somehow.

Now, I just need to a camera to capture the action inside my refrigerator when the door’s closed. I just know that the red peppers and the cans of hard cider are having some great parties in there.

GoPro – Full wash cycle in a dishwasher [YouTube] (via Foodbeast)

W*USA 9

Police seek suspect in Va. restaurant robbery W*USA 9 Police are searching for a suspect who threw a brick through the front glass door of a restaurant in Manassas, Va. and then fled with money from the cash register on Tuesday morning. Loading… Post to Facebook. Police seek suspect in Va. restaurant ...

W*USA 9

Police: Man choked woman in Va. W*USA 9 MANASSAS (WUSA9) -- A woman was taken to the hospital she was choked during an argument, police said. It happened at the 10100 Block of Brandon Way in Manassas at around 2:28 a.m. on Friday. Taron Leonard Alston, 27, of Manassas was arrested ...

At least 68 elephants, some 4 percent of the population of one of Africa's oldest parks, have been slaughtered by poachers over the last two months using chain saws and helicopters, the non-profit group managing the park has warned.

Squirrels and birds are turning the lights out on customers in Alaska's capital.

The perfect pothole might not exist for many people -- but for mosaic artist Jim Bachor, it's one with a nice oval shape. Bachor began filling those potholes a little more than a year ago, after one in front of his house became a hassle.

The unsolved beheading of a retiree and the killing of his elderly wife has so rattled their gated, lakeside Georgia community that neighbors are casting about for even outlandish explanations. Was it a mob hit? A drug dealer? A hungry alligator?

Authorities in Las Vegas said Thursday that a mother may face attempted murder charges after she apparently threw her baby, her toddler and herself out a second-story window.

It's rush hour in Philadelphia for thousands of baby toads as they hop across a busy residential street on a rainy summer night.

This year more than 2,000 people took part in Saturday's Run Amuck (a four-miler) and Mini Run Amuck (a two-miler). The event began in 2008, at Quantico Marine Corps base, to promote physical fitness.

Of course you want your best friends at your wedding - so what if they bark?

State health officials say youth smoking rates in Virginia have plummeted to an all-time low.

Baltimore police shot and killed a steer that escaped from a city slaughterhouse on a downtown street Friday morning, a spokeswoman said.

Four lion cubs are set to make their public debut Friday at the National Zoo's Great Cat Exhibit.

The Wildlife Center of Virginia is set to release a bald eagle at Land's End Wildlife Management Area in King George.

The main reason a replica 18th century ship sank during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 was because the captain and management of the HMS Bounty made a bad decision to sail into the storm, a U.S. Coast Guard report said Thursday, echoing the conclusions of other federal investigators before them.

Thanks to a local team of scientists, one of nature's treasures that was on the brink of extinction now has a fighting chance at survival.